From The Ashes
by Belle A Lestrange
Summary: On the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry finds himself on the balcony of the astronomy tower, thinking about all those who were now lost and the grave decision he made 365 days ago. Now he's contemplating on whether or not he made the right decision. Did he? They all say 'I know' but they don't. How can they know when no one even bothers to understand? Enter Draco.


**A/N:** **In memory of all those who died in the battle of Hogwarts, we miss and love you dearly. Also, in memory of the boy who came back from the dead.**

 **I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER -SADLY!**

* * *

 **From the Ashes**

 **by**

 **Belle A Lestrange**

Harry swung his legs back and forth through the stone pillars of the Astronomy Tower balcony. His gaze was unfocused as he stared out at the sunset that was blanketing the grounds in a soft, burning gold light.

The Easter holidays were almost over, the next month would be swallowed completely by their NEWT's exams and then applying to numerous jobs over the summer to start building their paths in the world. He knew he should be over-joyed by the prospect of it all, but in all honesty it just left him feeling incredibly hollow. As though life was suddenly to fickle and meaningless at this point. It was another one of those things that he kept to himself, mostly because he didn't want to depress his friends with how morbid his own thoughts really were. Even as close as he had gotten to Draco in the months following Christmas, he wasn't sure that he could trust himself to find the right words.

Every now again he sighed to himself and leaned this way and that, his eyes never straying from the horizon that glimmered with the promise of a clear night sky.

He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn't hear the footsteps coming up the spiral staircase, or approach him across the stone balcony. He wasn't even aware of the other person until a hand rested on his shoulder and he lurched around, his eyes wide and wand jabbing into the shin of the sneak. "Merlin, don't do that!" he hissed out as his heart skipped a beat before calming down in his chest.

Draco didn't even pretend to look offended of having a wand jabbed into his leg. Even to this day, after months of progress, there were still the odd group of students who still weren't keen on having 'death eater's' in the school any longer. According to them, it didn't matter that the Dark Mark on Draco's forearm had seared and burned for a week straight after Voldemort's demise and was now just a patch of raw, red skin that had scabbed over and was finally healing. The bullying was mostly being taken care of, but there was still the odd night when Draco would come back into the eighth year common room and with blood running down into his collar from a busted nose.

He didn't say anything as he settled down on the stone balcony, his back to the stone pillars and loosening his tie. He bent his knees and propped his elbows up, before tilting his head back and heaving a soft sigh. Harry glanced over at the blonde, quickly checking to make sure that there were no bumps or bruises marring the flawless skin, before letting his eyes slip back over to the horizon.

A weight settled heavily in his stomach.

"How did you know where to find me?" he asked quietly as he fiddled with his wand in his lap.

Draco didn't answer straight away. Instead he turned his head to the side so that he could watch Harry's profile glow softly in the dying light, the breeze tousling his hair. "I've known that you come here for a while," he admitted with an air of confidence that made the brunette's stomach jolt just a little. "But I thought I'd let you have your privacy for a little while."

"Why?"

"You've had that look on your face for a while. Something's been on your mind and people crowding around you isn't about to help the problem, is it?"

Harry shook his head, "To be honest, I'm sort of glad that it's you who knows and not the others." He dropped his head forward and twirled his wand around, "I've just been thinking a lot about exams and graduation. I can't help but feel it's all so pointless."

"What do you mean?" Draco asked as a faint frown creased his brow.

Harry licked his lips but stayed silent. He didn't know if he wanted to tell Draco what he had been thinking about lately. For the last year, in fact. He wasn't sure he wanted to tell anybody about it, but he knew that people were starting to notice how 'off' he had been in the last couple of weeks. He pulled at a frayed thread on his hoodie -having skipped all his lessons of the day, choosing to do some meditation instead -before sighing and tearing his eyes away from the horizon for a moment.

Draco's expression was soft, a mask-less face he only let Harry see and only when they were completely alone together, as he waited for the brunette to speak.

Harry took a deep breath and decided to hedge around the subject. "It's just, since we all practically stared Death in the face, doing something as tedious as exams and looking for a job seem -well -so mundane and ordinary that I just want to scream if someone mentions them again."

Draco rolled his eyes and swallowed down the snicker. It wouldn't go down well, not with Harry looking that distressed. He reached out and took one of Harry's hands in his own and gaze it a firm squeeze. "There's something that's been on your mind for a year and you haven't told anyone about it?"

Harry shook his head before giving a stiff laugh. "How can I? Even if I told you, you would judge me nine ways to Sunday. It's a lot more darker than just not seeing the point of life anymore. Because I don't, Draco, and that scares me. If I don't see the point in life then how am I supposed to get through the next -Oh, I don't know -the next sixty odd years of my life finding everything tedious and menial? No one can physically live like that and be happy with it."

Draco shook his head, "Well we both know someone who pretty much survived a life like that. Severus pretty much lost all he had to live for when he was just a few years older than us. I mean sure he was only thirty-eight when he was killed, but he still lived almost twenty years just stewing in his own rage, hatred and pain. I'm not saying it's an ideal life, but you can still ... live."

"What if I don't want to live like that?" Harry countered, "The whole point of this battle was that so no one would have to live like that again if it could be avoided."

"So you want to avoid it?"

"If I could, I would. There honestly is no real way though." Harry ducked his head, "I just don't want to get stuck in a dead end ministry job and be bored beyond recognition and then have an early mid-life crisis."

"Is that what this is?" Draco asked straightening up a little, "Because if you've having a teen-life-crisis I will not hesitate to throw you over this balcony." He had meant it as a joke but he was surprised when a shadow passed over the brunette's face. "Harry?" he asked after a moment, "Look this is clearly bothering you and if you can't tell me or even Hermione, then you'll need to talk to a professional which will not only cost a lot, but there is a risk of it getting out to the public. So, what'll it be?"

"That's such a cheap tactic, Draco, even for you." There was no malice in Harry's words, so that blonde didn't take it too personally. Harry closed his eyes before turning his head back to the fading sunlight. "There's something that I haven't told anyone about what happened in the forest that night and to be perfectly honest, talking about it out loud means that it's not some sort of dream I had. It makes it all too real. I'm ... I'm not sure I'm ready for that."

Another squeeze to his wrist drew his eyes up to meet Draco's own. "Sometimes you need to confront your fears. Do you know how scared I was seeing your dead body their in Hagrid's arms, thinking that he had won? I've never wanted to be killed as much as I did in that moment."

"You can't possibly understand what it means to say that!" Harry hissed.

"Oh but I do," Draco replied sincerely, "You're forgetting that up until that moment, I'd been living at His headquarters for the better part of a year. Even school wasn't a safe haven anymore, like it should have been." He looked into Harry's eyes with such an intense look that the brunette felt shivers running through him. "Only a world were there was no 'you' and he was the only one who ruled? Everyone would suffer like I had, maybe even more. So many people would have died. The worlds population would have diminished to at least a quarter of what it is now." He dipped his head so that blonde hair fell in front of his eyes making him appear both parts vulnerable and defensive. "So yes, I do know what it's like to not want to live in the world anymore. Because sometimes this world ... just isn't worth hanging onto."

"I feel oddly touched," Harry admitted dryly, "That my death would have made you want to die. Almost like you'd want to join me."

"There would have been no guarantee that I would have gone to where you did. I might have gone to an even worse place."

Harry hummed before leaning to one side and drawing in deep breaths. He needed to psyche himself up a little more but he could feel the words burning inside him. "That night in the forest, after we gathered the dead and put them in the Great Hall, I went down to face him. Hermione knew what I was going to do and why. Ron might have known but I think he wanted to be in denial about it for as long as possible. You know what he's like."

Draco nodded and rolled his eyes. He knew all too well what the redhead in question was like.

"Anyway, I convinced them both to stay and destroy the other horcruxes. I went down to the forest on my own. Well, I wasn't really alone."

"What do you mean?" Draco asked as he cocked his head to the side.

"Well ... You know the resurrection stone?" Draco nodded. "Well -Dumbledore had it in his office. I found it in the snitch he left me in his last will and testament." Swallowing thickly, he forced his voice to work, "And it ... It showed me my parents. Brought them back for that brief moment. They said that they were so proud of me and that they loved me. They wouldn't leave me at all, even if the plan went ahead."

Frowning, Draco asked, "What plan was that? To just hand yourself over to a maniac?"

Harry shook his head, "No, that wasn't the plan. Not really. The plan was ... I needed to die."

The silence between them was like a barrier of ice.

"You needed to die," Draco repeated slowly.

Harry nodded stiffly, "Yes. To put it bluntly, the rumors were true. There was a piece of his soul inside me. I needed to die in order to destroy it."

Draco exhaled and slumped back against the stone pillar. As blunt as Harry had been it was still a lot to take in. He rubbed the back of his neck until the skin burned with the pressure and his stomach lurched uncomfortably. Harry had died. He could've stayed gone. Voldemort could have won after all. He felt nauseated but then another thought entered his head that made him shiver with the cold.

"You were only seventeen," he finally breathed into the still air between them.

Harry blinked. He hadn't exactly been expecting such a response. He would have expected the need for more details, so why was Draco focusing on his age? "Um ... Yeah you know when my birthday was ... is."

Draco hummed, "That's not what I meant. I meant that at the age of seventeen you were ready to give up possibly the best years of your life and just die like that. For a world who, for the most part, have slandered you and your life."

Harry gave a stiff little shrug, "It doesn't always make sense, I know. But in the long run, I think I could've been at peace to know that maybe, just maybe everyone would be alright again."

"Then how come you're ... here?" Draco asked, his voice latching awkwardly in his throat.

"I decided to come back," Harry murmured, twirling his wand around in his lap again. "To be honest, if I didn't who else would've had the balls enough to kill him?"

"True," Draco snorted dryly.

"Even so, now that the majority of the danger has passed, I feel like I don't know what to do with myself. Everything is tedious and boring and miserable!"

Draco watched as Harry worked himself into a frenzy. His face got a little redder and a vein in his neck throbbed. It took all of his willpower not to just tackle the brunette to the floor and take him by surprised to shut up. Instead he reached out and gripped his shoulder tightly and forced the younger boy to look at him. "Harry, Harry, Harry just calm down!"

Harry groaned and shook his head back and forth. "No, there is no calming down!" he snapped. Even though he ached and burned with a fiery rage, he felt his body weaken at Draco's firm assuring touch. Draco was cool, calm and real. He grounded him and it felt refreshing to have something solid to focus on after the months of dark nights where he slept alone, the fear of never waking up rolling through his skull like thunderous clouds.

"There's always a reason to calm down, Harry," Draco assured in a controlled voice. He didn't loosen his grip on Harry as he shifted a little closer, his lower back aching from the position he was in. "Listen, if this is bothering you so much why haven't you spoken to anyone about it?"

Harry's bottom lip wobbled as he turned to face Draco, and that's when the other boy realised that there were tears in those green eyes. "How am I meant to explain to anybody that maybe I should be dead right now? That maybe it's better for me to be dead?"

Draco faltered. There was no real way to respond to that without coming off as an optimistic arsehole. He shuddered and tilted his head back against the stone, "I don't know Harry but maybe the reason you're feeling so trapped is because you're back here, where it all started and where it all went wrong. You're seeing both the empty spaces of students and teachers who died and yet at the same time you're seeing new first years coming here for the first time. You're seeing their joy and optimism and you're wondering if Hogwarts will ever hold that for you again. Am I right?"

"Y-Yes," Harry strained out.

"To tell you the truth, Harry, I think it was a mistake for you to come back to Hogwarts. I know Hermione persuaded you and to be honest, if you didn't we wouldn't have reconciled our difference. Whilst I am grateful for that, and for you helping the Slytherin's get some measure of respect back, I don't think Hogwarts is a good place for you to be right now."

Harry frowned. That hadn't been an answer he'd been expecting. Surely he should be encouraged to get all of his education and a job afterwards. Why was Draco saying the opposite? "Um ... Why do you say that?"

"Because it's a shadow of what it used to be for you. It's nothing but a mass grave right now, and even you can't deny that," the blonde reasoned mildly.

"But we literally graduate at the end of June. What would the point of quitting now be?"

Draco snorted, "Are you kidding? No offence, Potter, but being the Boy Who Lived has its perks. Until the day you die people will reason that defeating the Darkest man of all wizarding history, is more of a merit to your name and magical ability than any piece of paper saying you passed. I'm pretty sure you'll be blindly marked anyway as soon as they see your name."

Harry wanted to protest, but his words died in his throat as Draco shot him a pointed look. It was true, even he had to grudgingly admit to it. His face fell and he dropped his chin to his chest as he tried to relax his tense shoulders. "Yeah I guess you're right. I only came back here because I was sure that there was something I hadn't learned yet, or that it would fill my time before I managed to go off into the world."

"How's that working out for you?" Draco asked, the sarcasm bringing a weak smile to Harry's mouth.

"Not great," he admitted, "The classes are running together, homework is boring and mind-numbing and I'm dreading the exams because I know I could drool on them and still pass with flying colours."

"Maybe you should do that."

"Yeah right," he scoffed.

"No, I'm serious," Draco reasoned, his calm expression unwavering, "At least it'd be a funny story to tell Teddy some day."

"As funny as that would be in the moment, Andromeda wouldn't like me setting that example. Besides, I don't think I want everyone seeing my dick, thanks."

"Didn't think of that," the blonde mused to himself before coming to his sense. "So, is there anything you've always wanted to do?"

Harry shrugged, "That's the problem. I have this whole new life, and a whole new take on it to come to terms with. A year on and I'm still struggling. I haven't even thought about what I want to do."

"Maybe that's what you should use the next few months to do. Find out what you want to do, make it a project or something. Do your research. If you want get your friends to help too. Look, even if you don't want to tell them everything, you don't have to. Just say that you've thought about it a lot recently and you think you need to do something outside of the ministry and the niche life you've lived up until now."

Harry looked impressed as Draco paused for a breath. He couldn't help but smile as the blonde flexed his arm muscles. "You really are a great motivational speaker. Maybe you should get a job where ninety per cent of it you give speeches."

"Oh I already have a job like that," he replied flippantly.

Harry blinked, startled. "You do?"

"Yes, didn't you know. I'm now Harry Potter's official life coach. I hear it pays very well."

Cocking a black eyebrow, Harry turned to look at the blonde in the dimming light. "Oh really? And how are you getting p-?" He didn't get to finish his sentence as Draco leaned over and stole a chaste kiss that took Harry my surprised and left him a little breathless. "Right um ... I think I'll have to pay that installments. Wouldn't want chapped lips now."

Draco's soft smile was almost blinding as he leaned in for another kiss.

They skipped dinner in favor of sitting on the balcony and watching the stars slowly appear in the darkening sky. Draco transfigured a blankets from one of the old textbooks in the astronomy cupboard and spread it out over both of their laps. They were both nestled into the narrow side of the balcony so that they were better able to see the stars and have an excuse to be closer to one another. Not that they really needed one. Harry was a little surprised that no one had come looking for them yet, as far as he knew, but he didn't care. Especially when Draco laced their fingers together between the folds of the blanket and nudged the other's foot gently.

"What was dying like?" Draco asked softly, his words whispering out into the air.

Harry was a little surprised but tried not to show it too much. He swallowed thickly and thought back to that night a whole year ago and tried to think of the words to describe just how ethereal it had been. He chewed on his lip and was grateful that Draco didn't stare at him until he fessed up like Hermione would have, or been humming with dread like Ron.

Thankfully, Draco just settled beside him with a cool, calm patience that Harry truly admired about him, especially after everything he'd been through.

"It was like I was floating. I think I died a little before going to the forest; I remember wondering through the hallways, drifting by classrooms like a ghost and seeing no one. No teachers, no death eaters ... I didn't see anything except the destruction. Everywhere was empty. Like every other living soul on the planet had vanished." He licked his lips and sighed, ducking his head forward and reveling in the warmth emanating from Draco's body. "Even the forest was empty. There were no centaurs or wolves or giants. It was completely empty, completely silent and everything was still. I felt like I was walking through a painting."

Draco shifted slightly so that he was now looking at Harry. His eyes didn't have any weight to them, though, it was almost as though he were slipping into a daydream. Was he imagining what Harry had been through, what it had felt like? Harry shivered and wondered if anyone could really and truly know what he felt like, and he doubted that it would ever happen.

"Is that what made it so easy for you to do it?" Draco murmured softly. "The fact that you had mentally numbed yourself to the world you loved, psychologically erasing everyone and everything that meant something to you so that the last thing you would see was Him -the man you had all this unfinished business with. Did that make it easier for you to die?" His eyes refocused so that he could look at Harry properly.

Harry swallowed thickly and struggled to even breath out a soft "yes."

Draco nodded his head slowly as though mulling the answer over. Eventually, he hummed to himself and leaned a little closer, "I can understand that."

Frowning, Harry asked, "Really?"

It wasn't that he doubted Draco's word, it was just he was so used to people coming up to him and saying 'I know how it feels ...'. Especially Ginny. She loved to rehash that saying almost every heated discussion they had with one another these days. He hated it when they said that. They would never know how he felt, what dying felt like, how he'd died long before those slit-red eyes had landed on him. But Draco hadn't said any of those things, he'd simply understood out of context what it had been like for him.

He didn't try to know what it was like he'd simply understood.

Perhaps that was all he'd needed.

"Thank you for listening," Harry eventually mumbled as he directed his gaze up to the sky, for lack of anything else to say to the older boy.

Draco hummed softly as he gave the other boys' fingers a squeeze. It was only then that Harry realised Draco hadn't let go of his hand throughout the entire time he'd been speaking. It made his heart feel oddly warm compared to how cold he'd become.

Wriggling closer to Draco he rested his head on the other boys' shoulder and hummed contently. He didn't want to move. Not yet. He was more than happy to sit on the stone balcony with Draco and bask in the silence of a burden finally lifting off his shoulders and ascending up in the night sky to settle among the stars.

 **THE END.**


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